In many fields of technology data are to be transferred in a system from one location to another. Examples come from all kinds of applications and tasks to be performed, for instance, including collecting sensor-related data from a sensor arranged at a different location than its corresponding control or processing unit responsible, for instance, for collecting and pre-processing the data. Other examples include, for instance, writing and/or reading data from a memory located at a different location, providing control signals to an actuator, reading data from or providing data to a user interface to name just a few examples.
While in many fields of technology and applications, data may be transmitted using highly sophisticated transmission schemes, a tendency exists to simplify the infrastructure used for transmitting data. In some of the fields and applications, comparably rough operating conditions may be present causing, for instance, disturbances in the transmissions. However, also under these more difficult operational conditions, the availability of the data may be important or even crucial for operating the corresponding system.
While highly sophisticated transmission schemes and their infrastructures may be capable of operating even under very difficult operation conditions, the tendency to simplify the infrastructure necessary to transmit the data is also present in these environments. This may limit the options available to a designer to reduce the influence of disturbances onto the signal transmission. Examples of options, which may not be available to a system designer, include additional shielding measures, increasing the available computational power to allow more elaborate error correcting codes to be used, increasing the signal energy to boost the signal-to-noise ratio and similar options.
Nevertheless, a robust operation of such a system, a comparably simply implementation and a robust transmission of data may yet be desirable. At the same time, a desire exists to increase the available bandwidth or—in other words—the available data throughput.
In the field of high volume architectures and/or low cost implementations, finding a solution to this challenge may be even more relevant than in other fields of technology. For instance, in motorized vehicles communication links via which different components communicate with one another and transmit data may be subjected to a large variety of tough operating conditions and a large number of distortions of different types. Distortions may, for instance, come from electric impulses used to operate systems of a vehicle, which in turn may capacitively or inductively couple into the transmission link. The situation may further be aggravated by environmental conditions which may at least partially lead to a signal degradation or even introduce additional types of distortions. Among the environmental conditions may, for instance, be large variations of the ambient temperature, the influence of moisture and vibrations to name just a few sources of additional distortions.
Although in the case of electrical systems and electrical signal transmission schemes these influences and distortions may be more significant than in other transmission schemes, similar challenges may also arise using non-electrical signals, for instance, magnetic signals, optical signals or other signals to transmit or exchange data. Moreover, similar challenges may also arise in systems which are not vehicle-based systems. Also in other fields of technology, comparable situations may exist including non-high volume architectures and/or non-low cost applications.